Shanghai: October 2003
Shanghai is like nothing that you'll see anywhere else in mainland China. Yeah, it's a big city that's been done before all over the western world, but it's an anomaly in China outside of Taiwan and Hong Kong. The architecture is what gives this city its edge. Businesses hold nothing back when developing buildings, and it appears that architects just keep outdoing themselves. The view of the city at night--brightly lit and thumping--is amazing from the Oriental Pearl Tower. Yeah, it's touristy, but the view is worth it. Shanghai also has an incredibly modern and informative museum. It gave me a lot of perspective on the things I had been seeing in China and prepared me for other sights that I hadn't seen yet.
Shanghai prides itself in being cosmopolitan--after all, it was divided up and used by several foreign governments as a business base after the Opium Wars in the late 1800's--and it really lives up to its reputation in a lot of ways. This is the only place I've seen in the PRC where two Chinese will walk down the street speaking English to one another. The discos and bars there were not unlike those in America. In the same night, I drank a $10 martini while listening to a swanky jazz band and found $2 beer and some great salsa dancing at another club.
A few hours' bus ride outside of Shanghai is Zhujiaojiao, a water village listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Sight. In China, this reads "used to have a culture of its own but has now been irreversibly altered by floods of tourists and the merchant mentality to pander after their money." The town itself is beautiful. It's a water village akin to Venice, complete with longboats outfitted by serenading boatmen and women. However, merchants selling the same cheap crafts and things you find everywhere in China have taken the place over so that it's difficult to even walk through the narrow streets. The one really cool thing I did see while there was a shop that makes silk blankets. A woman sat outside of the shop separating silk worms from their web and forming the silk into usable pieces. It was a really cool process to watch. Overall, Zhujiaojiao was an interesting place to visit, but it's not for the claustrophobic.
I went to Shanghai with a group of teachers from another school here in Beijing, and we really had a great time, even though we were served the same set meal with sweet and sour fish (it stares at you while you eat it) everyday at the restaurants we were guided to by the tour company that had set up our trip. I stayed with a great Kiwi who tried to teach me all about rugby in the course of one game, and we traveled with some Aussies who taught me that "Sheila" is more than a name down under.
For some reason, none of my pictures of Shanghai itself turned out, but I have some of Zhujiaojiao that you can check out in the photo album.
Shanghai Info: www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/shanghai/index.htm
Zhujiaojiao Info: http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/shanghai/zhujiajiao.htm